Vienna
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: Here, in a city that doesn't speak English, you're a little lost but that's okay because you never were looking to be found. — Slow down, you're doing fine. You can't be everything you want to be before your time. Astoria&Draco. post-war. "Vienna" by Billy Joel. For Leah (TheTwoDL).


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: Won't you help me find the way home?  
**

Written for the fanfiction terms categories competition "flame" ; Tien Len Competition "Round Two: card 5 - Astoria Greengrass, teacup, "I thought you were dead." ; Off The Block Competition "Freestyle: Extra Hard" ; Birthday Fic Exchange "May 10"

For Leah (TheTwoDL).

4 May 2014. Inspired by "Vienna" by Billy Joel. Word Count:

**You're a little lost but that's okay because you never were looking to be found.**

* * *

**Vienna**

[-]

**i.**

You sit alone, sunglasses perched on the bridge of your nose, and fingers idly swirling the spoon inside of your empty teacup. It's not stridently bright outside this morning, but you prefer to look at the world through tinted glasses. The shadows make everything clearer, as dark and backwards as that sounds. Green grass glows against the grey horizon and the Heuriger's outdoor patio is draped in a jungle of ivy. Here, in a city that doesn't speak English, you're a little lost but that's okay because you never were looking to be found.

Back at Hogwarts, you were just a child, easily impressionable and so desperate for attention that nothing else mattered in your tiny bubble world besides having all eyes on you. You loved the magic of the castle and adored the endless possibilities of your limitless life. You had the power to make the stars explode and the sun collide with the Earth. Everything was right at your fingertips, waiting for you to wave your baton and conduct the universe as you saw fit.

But then the war came, and with it were the flames of a revolution that burned much too brightly. It scared you, all of the fires that lit up within the hearts of revolutionaries, and you fled with the rest of your too-proud housemates when the heat became too hot to handle.

He stayed behind, though, and that made you all the more afraid. The inferno raging inside of him threatened to melt the ice he was sculpted from. His eyes blazed with the destruction of a thousand galaxies. For a moment, you thought Draco Malfoy could be the catalyst who razed the wizarding world. He certainly had enough incentive to do so, ever since the madman took up residency in his life.

As other children living in the midst of a battlefield, the war made you all grow up much too soon. You had so many dreams and sparkling plans, but they all shriveled up and died as you focused your energy and attention on surviving in the present instead of living in the future.

Before you started living on a day-by-day basis, though, he helped you figure out what you wanted in life. All of those nights in the Astronomy Tower where you took a break from reality and dreamt of a better future were spent with him. He was the one who showed you that the shadows provided clarity. Draco would sit on the windowsill, just on the precipice between flying and falling, and would point out the different tombs in the graveyard of light hanging overhead.

"There's Adara," he would list off. "And Capella. Arcturus. Beetlegeuse."

"Do you wish on stars?" you once asked him.

Draco laughed bitterly. "For what? I'm a simple person with a complicated mind."

You shook your head at his ambiguity and climbed up on to the sill with him. The cold air stung your face but still, you leaned further out into the atmosphere. "I wish my name was engraved into the sky." You're so close to inhaling the stars that you almost tumble out of the tower like a princess who's finally found a way of escaping.

"Shit!" he yelled, sounding frightened and amused all at once. He grabbed your waist and pulled you inside of the Astronomy Tower's room. "Merlin, Tori, don't do that again. I thought you were dead."

You laughed because that was so far from the truth; that little stint was the most alive you'd ever felt in all of your fifteen years. "Still very much alive," you informed him with an unapologetic grin.

"What were you trying to do?" he asked slightly incredulous that you had even dared to put your life in jeopardy.

"Leave," you said simply. "I'm tired of living in a warzone. I just want to . . . leave." There's no other way you can summarise how badly you want to extricate yourself from Britain before the whole place collapses from the revolt against the Dark Lord.

"Do you know where you would go?"

"Vienna. I hear the city waits for you instead of leaving you behind."

He hummed. "Sounds nice. I might have to tag along."

Austria is everything you have imagined and more. You left Britain in 1998 and missed the entire final battle of the War. You were underage, of course, so there was nothing you really could have done to help, but you never went back during Britain's reconstruction phase. Mother and Father paid for your tuition to the Austrian school of witchcraft, and this is now your fifth year in Vienna post-graduation. Draco hasn't come to visit you at all, but then again, you haven't made much of an effort to visit England. You still whisper the name of all the celestial tombstones to remind yourself of the life and love you once had, but they are silent and do not respond back.

And so you sit here, isolated and blending into the background in the city of dreams, as you wait for your life to begin once again.

[-]


End file.
